Posted
by
timothy
on Friday July 15, 2011 @07:23PM
from the as-do-we-all dept.

An anonymous reader writes "Conventional gelatin is made from collagen inside animals' skin and bones, however a group of researchers has managed to replace that animal base with a human one. The process involves taking human gelatin genes and inserting them into a strain of yeast, which can be cultivated to grow gelatin with controllable features. Jinchun Chen, the leader of the study, and his colleagues believe they can scale this process up to produce large amounts of human-based gelatin for medical uses. The research appears in the American Chemical Society's Journal of Agricultural and Food Chemistry."

Well, the summery is misleading. Fact is that we've had the technology to make gelatin from human tissue for millennia. The new development here is that unlike the previous method, this does not require hacking up corpses and rendering them in a pot.

Do you have any idea how many perfectly nice earthworms are killed by plow blades on organic farms as fields are being tilled to plant soybeans so that vegans can smugly pretend they're not bothering any non-plant life forms? Do you know how many scrupulous gardeners use chickens to control insects and weeds, and notice that no hens seem particularly distraught about laying eggs on a regular basis? Do you realize how absurd vegans make themselves sound over matters like this? It's just faux piety, and it's

How is it faux? They are living their ethics to the best of their abilities, which would seem to be a good practical definition of piety. Do you consider Jains to be practicing false piety when they wear face masks to avoid inhaling fruit flies?

Perhaps they are, and thus it's real piety. If so, then what it is instead is a case of faux ethics (in the sense that they are built on internally inconsistent, hypocritical, irrational standards applied capriciously and in a fair-weather, fashion-minded way that highlights the mixed premises and deliberately obtuse, purposefully selective perception of reality that underlies their professed world view).

Veganism denotes a philosophy and way of living which seeks to exclude - as far as is possible and practical - all forms of exploitation of, and cruelty to, animals for food, clothing, or any other purpose; and by extension, promotes the development and use of animal-free alternatives for the benefit of humans, animals, and the environment.

We have animal-free alternatives, so it's a moot point really.

Beyond that, it could be argued we're still exploiting that animal (assuming the cow was raised in captivity.)

I've seen arguments for vegan/vegetarianism that allows them to consume human flesh if it's produced in a non-destructive manner-- specifically, eating their own placenta. Looking around online shows some interesting links and recipes for that, actually. Some interesting photos and commentary if you search for a blog post with the title of 'Placenta Party'.

So, if you take your fat, and make human jello out of it and eat it, do you get fat again and get to repeat the whole process?

Actually this is kind of exciting for the medical field. I would think. If we can develop human genetics to take off in another medium and cultivate parts to replace our own dying ones, that would be GREAT. What's even better is we can make BETTER replacements. They did say a form of jello? The first thing that comes to mind is even BETTER breast enhancements.

Some entrepreneur ought to be able to sell at least one (5 ton minimum) order of "Certified Human" ballistic gelatin to some defense department employee gullible enough to think they ought to test it and see if the "Certified human" content makes a difference.

Briefly mentioned in the summary: Medical uses. If you can make gelatin that is completely human bio-compatable, you can use it freely in the human body. Infuse it with drugs and you have a time-release capsule that can be implanted. Build it around shattered bone, and you've got a scaffolding that you can re-grow bone on. It'd even make a decent short-term replacement skin in some cases.

Bio-compatable, bio-degradable, flexible, and about the same density as most human tissue. There's lots of uses for